Author: msparksc

With the eMentoring year coming to an end we wanted to look back at our many accomplishments! This year our first batch of mentees and mentors started their journey together – a huge milestone towards impacting the lives of youth by supporting them in their pursuit of health careers.

This year we also recruited many new and existing mentors and mentees who are eager to continue on to the next eMentoring year. We attribute the success of mentor and mentee recruitment to our established community, organizational, and institutional partners (e.g. Adams Lake Band, Akisq’nuk First Nation, Sto:lo Nation, School District 36 (Surrey), and School District 23 (Okanagan). New partnerships are also beginning to blossom with School District 83 (Salmon Arm) and Bella Bella.

This year we launched our online mentoring platform on the icouldbe.org website and mentors and mentees began to work through their Personal Quest.  These early success stories have shown us just how rewarding this program is for everyone involved.

We received recognition and honour for our project when we received 2 awards from the Ashoka Changemakers Initiative: Inspiring Approached to First nation, Metis and Inuit Learning. Ashoka Changemakers is a global community that provides resources for people to contribute to a better world.  Ashoka makes it possible for individuals and groups to share ideas and network in order to recruit supporters, track progress  and inspire change.  Its is an honor to be recognized by such an amazing community of people. We are grateful to have recieved recognition for our project after only our first year of active eMentoring.

We hope that next year will be even more fulfilling and memorable! We are excited about the up coming year and the new opportunities and accomplishments that the new year will bring!

The sun has finally decided to show itself and we at eMentoring are getting energized as we continue to work tirelessly at recruitment.  Mentor and mentee applications are starting to come in and we are getting excited that the fall eMentoring term is going to great!

In other news we are happy to announce that we have a new addition to our team.  Cailin Lau is our new work study student who will be helping us out with mentee recruitment, event planning and anything else that needs done around the office.  Welcome Cailin to the eMentoring team!

We are beginning recruitment for the fall intake!  Our community leads, eMentoring staff who oversee the mentees in each community, are working diligently to recruit new students who are interesting in participating in the eMentoring program.  Each community lead is situated within the community so that there is always someone close by to encourage and facilitate.

Any Aboriginal youth in BC between the ages of 11-18 can participate in the program!

eMentoring is an online mentorship program that matches Aboriginal youth with a mentor, where together, they will work trough a Personal Quest in which mentees gain the confidence and skills required to pursue a university education and possibly a career in the health sciences.

Mentees benefit from the program by:

-Getting a chance to communicate and build a relationship with a post-secondary student who has similar interests
-Supporting youth to believe they can graduate high school and enter university or college
-Learning how to develop attainable steps to reach a goal
-The program may spark an interest in the health sciences, which is an area that desperately needs more Aboriginal professionals!

Interested in becoming a mentee? Know an Aboriginal youth who would benefit from having a mentor?

Click here to download an application: Aboriginal eMentoring BC: Mentee Application Form

Got a question? Contact our Mentee & Mentor Coordinator!

Nahannee-fé Gillett
(t) 604-875-4111 ext. 69152
(e) nahannee-fe.g@ubc.ca

To be held on Sept 28, 29, & 30, 2012 – Chase, BC

Hosted by:  Adams Lake Indian Band,  Education Department

The 3 day conference features hands on workshops and activities; where youth get a chance to explore and exposes them to:

• Careers
• Restorative Justice
• Canoe Journey
• Traditional Games
• Digital Filming
• Fish Camp
• Technology
• Survival/Spirituality

Scheduled evening events:

• Lahal Tournament
• Shuswap Idol
• KASP

Please view video clip from last year’s Dreamcatcher Shuswap Youth Conference 2011. I would like to acknowledge Doreen Manuel and her students (Indigenous Independent Digital Filmmaking Program, Capilano University) who worked with youth and put together this video:

http://youtu.be/TdA5YUFDesU

If you are interested in attending the Dreamcatcher Shuswap 4^th Annual Youth Conference, please complete and submit this registration package: Dreamcatcher Complete Registration Package-2012

Additional information contact Adams Lake Band, Education Department – 250-679-8841.

Show your support for eMentoring via twitter by checking out our twitter account @ementoringbc and join the conversation at the Ashoka Inspiring Approaches to FNMI award ceremony using: #ashokafnm and #fnmisummit

Don’t forget to watch the award ceremony that is streaming live right now at:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/inspring-approaches-to-fnmi-learning-summit

Hey eMentoring supporters! Tomorrow Ashoka will be streaming live the “Inspiring Approaches to First Nations, Métis and Inuit Learning” summit in Gatineau, Quebec at 10:45am (PST-Vancouver).  Be sure to check out the link below to see Katherine receive the 2 awards we won!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/inspring-approaches-to-fnmi-learning-summit

Wow! I can’t believe it is the end of the University term already! So far this year has just flown by.  Although the school year is winding down, here at eMentoring we are gearing up to finish off the eMentoing term with a bang!  We have received research approval to begin recruiting in School District 23; which is the Central Okanagan area.  We are hoping this will increase our recruitment of mentees for the fall.  We are planning an end of the year celebration for active and potential new mentees to celebrate our successful year of eMentoring.  We also hope the event will give potential mentees a chance to check out the program. We are discussing the potential of making eMentoring a credit course for mentees, if this is achieved it would be a great way at making our program sustainable over the long term.  We have begun asking our mentors to give us feedback on how our personal quest is structured.  This is only the beginning in improving our program so that it will continue to grow and develop over the years to come.

We have begun the interview process for our second mentor intake.  We have already met alot of promising candidates and we are only half way through the interview process.   We are seeing many more applicants from universities outside of UBC  including SFU and U-Vic.  This means that eMentoring is expanding and we are successfully reaching out to other schools and communities across the province. We can’t wait to meet the rest of our mentor applicants!

Last Friday we held our very first mentor support session.  We got great feedback from mentors about how they and their mentees are doing in the program so far.  With this feedback we hope to improve aspects of the program to make sure eMentroing is running efficiently as possible.  We also made sure that mentors were up to date about what is going on on our end.  We are planning to do future support sessions to further guide mentors and ensure communication stays strong between everyone involved! Because we are growing so fast with mentor applications coming in from other post secondary institutions such as SFU and UVIC, we are moving these mentor support sessions to an online, webinar format so that we can maximize attendance. A lot of these students have heavy schedules, so arranging day time meetings is often a huge challenge. By hosting webinars online during the evening, mentors can connect from anywhere! Just another smart way to use technology!

Happy 2012 from all of us at eMentoring!  The project has grown so much over the past year and we are eager to begin this year with a running start. The eMentoring version of icouldbe.org has officially gone live and both mentees and mentors have begun to create their accounts and establish relationships.  We are currently in the process of recruiting volunteers for our next intake.  If you are interested in becoming involved with eMentoing or know someone who would be download our mentor application under the Get Involved! tab.  This year is shaping up to be an exciting one.  We hope to learn and grown so much more over the course of this next year and to bring the project to a new level!